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High cost of housing driving students out of Vancouver School District

Housing costs cited as one of the main reason families are pulling kids out of school, survey finds

Children are increasingly being pulled from Vancouver schools as families move to more affordable places, where they can afford to buy a home.

Photograph by: PHIL CARPENTER
, The Gazette

Vancouver’s high cost of housing is being cited as the major reason families are pulling their kids out of schools, a new survey from the Vancouver school board shows.

The purpose of the report is to pinpoint the cause of the Vancouver School District’s declining student enrolments.

In each of the past three years, the district has had a net loss of between 600 and 700 students, the report shows. A typical elementary school in Vancouver has around 300 children.

Although the results are preliminary, three-quarters of respondents so far indicated that high housing costs are a factor in their decision to leave, said VSB vice-chairman Mike Lombardi. “Seventy-five per cent (of respondents) have already told us it’s housing costs. That’s the big (reason) that shows up.”

Enrolment is projected to continue to drop by about 1,000 kids per year for the next three to four years, before starting to rise again, Lombardi said.

“More families than not have indicated that they are leaving the district for reasons such as the cost of housing, employment opportunities, and changes in family circumstances,” the report states. The majority of the responses say their child will attend a public school outside of Vancouver.

About 575 parents have been asked to complete the survey this year and about 150 responses have been received to date. A more thorough analysis will be done this fall, when more responses have been received, the report states.

University of B.C. policy professor Paul Kershaw said he’s not surprised by the results.

“It reflects an exodus out of Vancouver, as young people, who are not only having young kids, but who are also trying to start up a home, are struggling to afford housing prices today,” Kershaw said. “Vancouver is a lovely place to be ... but if you’re trying to get into the housing market now, it’s very difficult, even for the elite.”

He said even Vancouver’s suburbs are expensive.

“Sure, we can go to the suburbs and people will find some modest relief in housing prices, but still they’re going to be facing mortgages of half a million dollars and they’ve just swapped an extra two hours of driving for the privilege,” Kershaw said.

This story hits home for the Woolley family, which moved to Powell River this March in the hopes of buying a place of their own.

The family of four was living in a co-op in Strathcona, a neighbourhood they loved and where they had great neighbours and friends. Pieta, 38, and her husband, Martyn, both had “fantastic” jobs in the city, while their son David, 6, literally “won the lottery” required to get a space in the French Immersion program at nearby Strathcona elementary school.

Pieta worked from home as a freelance journalist so she could look after daughter Abi, 3, while Martyn went to work for a non-profit organization.

However, Pieta and Martin were working in jobs without pensions and couldn’t get a foot in the door of the city’s housing market. So, like the majority of families whose kids leave Vancouver schools, they moved away.

In Strathcona, the family was paying $1,200 a month for their unit. Today, the family pays less than $900 a month for a “gigantic house with a huge yard.”

“Our actual cost of living, I keep saying, has been reduced by about 50 per cent,” Pieta said.

Declining student enrolment is a trend being seen throughout many parts of Metro Vancouver, said Lombardi. It spells bad news for school boards because fewer students means less government funding and difficult decisions about spending cuts or school closures.

“Other than Surrey, every school district has declining enrolment right now because of demographics. The city tells us we’ve got more people moving into Vancouver, but fewer have families,” he said. “The projection is that five years out we will be seeing our schools filling up again, unless the housing crisis even gets worse and they decide to move out.”

Lombardi said the city is trying to make housing more affordable. “They’ve got laneway housing and social housing, but we know it’s a big issue for Vancouver. It’s a challenge, but we also know that Vancouver is the most desirable city in the world.”

The district also surveyed Vancouver families with preschool children in a bid to find out what would keep them in Vancouver when their kids reach school age.

“What we’ve heard loud and clear is that they want child care in a school,” Lombardi said, adding that he would like to see before and after school care in every elementary school.

“Parents are working and they don’t work nine to three. People tell us their second highest cost as a family is child care, after their mortgage.”

Brent Toderian, planning consultant at Toderian UrbanWorks and former director of city planning for Vancouver, said it’s important for cities to have family-friendly building policies.

“Kids are the indicator species of a great neighbourhood,” Toderian said, adding that while Vancouver does require that major new developments have one-quarter of their units with at least two bedrooms, there is no requirement for more family friendly three-bedroom suites.

He also noted that 52 per cent of Vancouverites rent their homes, and that the average rents are not as “out of whack” as the cost of buying a home. He said it’s important to consider factors beyond the cost of buying a home, such as the cost of transportation or well-paying jobs.

One suggestion that could buoy the school-age population in Vancouver is that schools could be community hubs, with controlled densification such as townhouse and low-rise buildings allowed in the area nearby, said Nathanael Lauster, assistant professor of sociology at the University of B.C.

“Other cities do have some solutions, as does Vancouver itself. Densification is one, and this could be more tied to the existing school infrastructure,” Lauster said. “But there are a lot of other potential solutions out there, and explorations of more are great.

“As just one example, I really like co-ops as a possible solution, with provincial and even city-based subsidies and enabling acts picking up where the federal government has pulled back.”

But the Woolley family was living in a co-op, and it still wasn’t enough.

Real estate listings provided as examples by Woolley show a 1,578-square-foot house in Powell River listed for $139,900 and a four-bedroom waterfront home listed for $475,000. In Vancouver, the average single-family home is priced at $917,200, while in the Fraser Valley it is $549,200.

Homes advertised for rent in Vancouver include a six-bedroom home in Kitsilano for $4,000 a month, a one-bedroom apartment in Yaletown for $1,750 a month, a three-bedroom ground-floor suite in Killarney for $1,450 a month and a two-bedroom basement suite at Boundary and Grandview for $850 a month.

The Woolleys are still renting, but plan to buy a house in the next year or so.

“At the end of your life, if you’ve been in a co-op forever, you have no equity,” Woolley said, adding that equity is even more important when you don’t have a pension. “There’s just something about buying a house.”

Toderian calls that the “North American mythology that you have to own your home.”

He says the Millennial generation — those between 20 and 35 years old — are much more open to the idea of renting.

“They don’t buy into the mythology of home ownership equalling success,” Toderian said. “It will be very interesting to see how they behave when they have families.”

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